ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE. 301 



the reach of our knowledge ? And then, after the universe is dead** 

 (according to the prediction of some scientists), and all life has ceased 

 forever, will not the shock of atoms continue though there will be no 

 mind to know it ? To this I reply that, though in no possible state of 

 knowledge can any number be great enough to express the relation 

 between the amount of what rests unknown to the amount of the 

 known, yet it is unphilosophical to suppose that, with regard to any 

 given question (which has any clear meaning), investigation would 

 not bring forth a solution of it, if it were carried far enough. Who 

 would have said, a few years ago, that we could ever know of what 

 substances stars are made whose light may have been longer in reach- 

 ing us than the human race has existed ? Who can be sure of what 

 we shall not know in a few hundred years ? Who can guess w T hat 

 would be the result of continuing the pursuit of science for ten thou- 

 sand years, with the activity of the last hundred ? And if it were to 

 go on for a million, or a billion, or any number of years you please, 

 how is it possible to say that there is any question which might not 

 ultimately be solved ? 



But it maybe objected, "Why make so much of these remote con- 

 siderations, especially when it is your principle that only practical 

 distinctions have a meaning ? " Well, I must confess that it makes 

 very little difference whether we say that a stone on the bottom of the 

 ocean, in complete darkness, is brilliant or not that is to say, that it 

 probably makes no difference, remembering always that that stone 

 may be fished up to-morrow. But that there are gems at the bottom 

 of the sea, flowers in the untraveled desert, etc., are propositions 

 which, like that about a diamond being hard when it is not pressed, 

 concern much more the arrangement of our language than they do the 

 meaning of our ideas. 



It seems to me, however, that we have, by the application of our 

 rule, reached so clear an apprehension of what we mean by reality, 

 and of the fact which the idea rests on, that we should not, perhaps, 

 be making a pretension so presumptuous as it would be singular, if 

 we were to offer a metaphysical theory of existence for universal 

 acceptance among those who employ the scientific method of fixing 

 belief. However, as metaphysics is a subject much more. curious than 

 useful, the knowledge of which, like that of a sunken reef, serves 

 chiefly to enable us to keep clear of it, I will not trouble the reader with 

 any more Ontology at this moment. I have already been led much fur- 

 ther into that path than I should have desired; and I have given the 

 reader such a dose of mathematics, psychology, and all that is most 

 abstruse, that I fear he may already have left me, and that what I am 

 now writing is for the compositor and proof-reader exclusively. I 

 trusted to the importance of the subject. There is no royal road to 

 logic, and really valuable ideas can only be had at the price of close 

 attention. But I know that in the matter of ideas the public prefer 



